Royal London Hospital

The Mildmay Mission Hospital has its origins in the work of The Rev. William Pennefather and his team of Christian women, later known as Deaconesses, who began their work of visiting the sick of the East End during the Cholera outbreak of 1866.

The Mildmay Medical Mission was opened in 1877 by William's widow Catherine Pennefather and eleven other women, in a converted warehouse behind Shoreditch Church, in Turville Square/Cabbage Court in the Old Nichol slums. Dedicated to the memory of William, who had died in 1873, it consisted of twenty-seven beds in three wards, one doctor, three nurses and five deaconesses in training. The Hospital was recognised for the training of nurses in 1883. Although the hospital did not require letters of admission, like many other voluntary hospitals of the time, and it did not discriminate by religion, throughout its existence the Mildmay stressed its role as an evalgelical Christian centre as well as a General Hospital; prayers were held on the wards, and biblical quotations were painted on the walls. Staff regarded their work as a religious as well as a medical vocation. Despite this, the hospital had a strong tradition for treating Jewish immigrants to the East End.

The slum clearances carried out by the London County Council in the 1880s and 1890s threatened the original site, and in 1890, a foundation stone was laid for a purpose-built hospital at Austin Street and Hackney Road. In 1892 the new Mildmay Mission Hospital opened, with 50 beds in 3 wards; male, female and children's. (The Mildmay Mission itself was based from c.1870s-1950s at Central Hall, Philpot Street, close to the Royal London Hospital).

In 1948 the hospital was incorporated into the National Health Service as part of the North East Metropolitan Regional Board's Central (No. 5) Group of Hospitals and transferred in 1966 to the East London Group. In 1974 it became part of the Tower Hamlets Health District. As a hospital with less that 200 beds the hospital was regarded as uneconomic and was closed down in 1982.

In 1985, the hospital was reopened outside the NHS as a charitable nursing home, with a GP surgery attached and caring for young chronically sick patients; in 1988, it became Europe's first hospice caring for people with HIV/AIDS and their families, acquiring a worldwide reputation. It was famously visited by Princess Diana in 1991. In 2013 a new, bigger purpose built hospice was opened, which still maintains outreach work across the world.